Social Indicators Movement and Human Agency: Some Updates from Local and Global Approaches

This paper offers a critical comment on Land and Michalos (2016) and suggests a relay perspective to see the past achievements and future directions in the social indicators movement. In accordance with Land and Michalos, it suggests bringing the issue of human agency to the foreground, and offers an example using an index of the mother’s wellbeing for global comparison. The maternal health and the social protection and autonomy of mothers are two distinct dimensions to represent the agency and capability of the mother. On the basis of this conceptualization, I calculated the scores for each country and present the ranking of 150 countries for 2010. The ranking of the mothers’ well-being shows substantial differences across countries. This index is also a strong predictor of children’s health in a cross-national perspective. Recent research trends also are updated.